Pool of Radiance

Unfortunately, I decided to bow out of this one. By my count, I spent about 50 hours, but a lot of that time was spent reloading after tough battles. I got my characters to level 6 (fighter/thief was 5/6) and started exploring the wilderness. The "last straw" was the three phase battle in the Kobold Caves. I actually got through it a couple of tries ago, but forgot to save before walking into the next room with another ginormous battle that ended up doing me in.

I never played the Gold Box games when they were current, so I don't have nostalgia helping me through. There was just too much combat and not enough story. The combat was really fun and well-designed, but even so, I felt like 70% of my playtime was in combat, not exploration, character development or plot developing. GBC helped a lot, but even with it it was still pretty rough around the edges. It didn't help that the graphics and sounds were so archaic even for the time, and no soundtrack. I supplemented with Rush's 3rd studio album, "Caress of Steel" (which is very proggy and complements old RPGs well), but that wasn't enough. My gaming time has whittled down to 5-10 hrs per week max, and I felt I wasn't making enough progress to warrant continuing. For example, I've literally spent two weeks retrying this same set of battles. It got old and frustrating.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. There's about 3 weeks til GOG releases KCD2, which I'm going to be all over. I might try to sneak in a 2nd playthrough of System Shock Remastered. There's always Control, which I also DNF, or starting another FPS like Doom 2016 or Bioshock Infinite. We'll see.

clueless1 wrote on 2025-03-08, 14:13:

Pool of Radiance […]
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Pool of Radiance

Unfortunately, I decided to bow out of this one. By my count, I spent about 50 hours, but a lot of that time was spent reloading after tough battles. I got my characters to level 6 (fighter/thief was 5/6) and started exploring the wilderness. The "last straw" was the three phase battle in the Kobold Caves. I actually got through it a couple of tries ago, but forgot to save before walking into the next room with another ginormous battle that ended up doing me in.

I never played the Gold Box games when they were current, so I don't have nostalgia helping me through. There was just too much combat and not enough story. The combat was really fun and well-designed, but even so, I felt like 70% of my playtime was in combat, not exploration, character development or plot developing. GBC helped a lot, but even with it it was still pretty rough around the edges. It didn't help that the graphics and sounds were so archaic even for the time, and no soundtrack. I supplemented with Rush's 3rd studio album, "Caress of Steel" (which is very proggy and complements old RPGs well), but that wasn't enough. My gaming time has whittled down to 5-10 hrs per week max, and I felt I wasn't making enough progress to warrant continuing. For example, I've literally spent two weeks retrying this same set of battles. It got old and frustrating.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. There's about 3 weeks til GOG releases KCD2, which I'm going to be all over. I might try to sneak in a 2nd playthrough of System Shock Remastered. There's always Control, which I also DNF, or starting another FPS like Doom 2016 or Bioshock Infinite. We'll see.

I'm sorry to read this! Not just because I love this game, but because it seemed like you were enjoying it until now, and finally because this is basically the most difficult set of battles in the game, and you're actually very close to completing the game. There is definitely a lot of combat in the game, but one thing I really appreciated about the game is that every minute I spent playing it felt like I was making progress and actually playing a game, rather than just following a plot or being made to fetch stuff (like in Fallout 3, for instance).

I mean no disrespect at all with saying this, but you had mentioned earlier that you were trying to get through the game as quickly as possible so that you could play Kingdom Come Deliverance II when it comes out on GOG, and that might be influencing how you think about the game. I know you really loved the first game. However, you might consider putting PoR aside for now, to revisit/finish later. Even though PoR is in my top 5 games of all time, I took many breaks along the way, and I think if I had been forcing myself to finish it on a deadline, it would have ended up annoying me.

Who knows? It might end up being a nice change of pace after you play through KC:D II?

newtmonkey wrote on 2025-03-08, 17:00:

I'm sorry to read this! Not just because I love this game, but because it seemed like you were enjoying it until now, and final […]
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clueless1 wrote on 2025-03-08, 14:13:

Pool of Radiance […]
Show full quote

Pool of Radiance

Unfortunately, I decided to bow out of this one. By my count, I spent about 50 hours, but a lot of that time was spent reloading after tough battles. I got my characters to level 6 (fighter/thief was 5/6) and started exploring the wilderness. The "last straw" was the three phase battle in the Kobold Caves. I actually got through it a couple of tries ago, but forgot to save before walking into the next room with another ginormous battle that ended up doing me in.

I never played the Gold Box games when they were current, so I don't have nostalgia helping me through. There was just too much combat and not enough story. The combat was really fun and well-designed, but even so, I felt like 70% of my playtime was in combat, not exploration, character development or plot developing. GBC helped a lot, but even with it it was still pretty rough around the edges. It didn't help that the graphics and sounds were so archaic even for the time, and no soundtrack. I supplemented with Rush's 3rd studio album, "Caress of Steel" (which is very proggy and complements old RPGs well), but that wasn't enough. My gaming time has whittled down to 5-10 hrs per week max, and I felt I wasn't making enough progress to warrant continuing. For example, I've literally spent two weeks retrying this same set of battles. It got old and frustrating.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. There's about 3 weeks til GOG releases KCD2, which I'm going to be all over. I might try to sneak in a 2nd playthrough of System Shock Remastered. There's always Control, which I also DNF, or starting another FPS like Doom 2016 or Bioshock Infinite. We'll see.

I'm sorry to read this! Not just because I love this game, but because it seemed like you were enjoying it until now, and finally because this is basically the most difficult set of battles in the game, and you're actually very close to completing the game. There is definitely a lot of combat in the game, but one thing I really appreciated about the game is that every minute I spent playing it felt like I was making progress and actually playing a game, rather than just following a plot or being made to fetch stuff (like in Fallout 3, for instance).

I mean no disrespect at all with saying this, but you had mentioned earlier that you were trying to get through the game as quickly as possible so that you could play Kingdom Come Deliverance II when it comes out on GOG, and that might be influencing how you think about the game. I know you really loved the first game. However, you might consider putting PoR aside for now, to revisit/finish later. Even though PoR is in my top 5 games of all time, I took many breaks along the way, and I think if I had been forcing myself to finish it on a deadline, it would have ended up annoying me.

Who knows? It might end up being a nice change of pace after you play through KC:D II?

All good points, newtmonkey. I'm not deleting it from my system, so that always opens up the chance of revisiting it. 😀

I do prefer exploration and interaction with tasteful amounts of combat thrown in. PoR has felt like mostly combat. Even exploration is constantly being interrupted with combats that you can flee, but I just wish it was much less frequent. Of course, once you clear an area, it's much better, but you seldom return for much time to areas that have been cleared, except to go through them on the way to somewhere else.

RandomStranger wrote on 2025-02-09, 10:11:

RandomStranger wrote on 2025-01-10, 21:13:

The first Witcher is not overly long. My first playthrough was less than 60 hours. But The Withcer 2 was less than 40.

Last week I started Morrowind GOTY. It'll last me all month. Maybe the next month too.

A month later, I'm still in Morrowind 67 hours in and still haven't touched the expansions and barely progressed with the main quests. Yesterday I made time to play as much as possible to make some progress. Moved from the fighter's guild into Dura's house in Balmora to better organize my stuff, joined House Talvani, reached level 30 cleared out 3 or 4 side quests from my quest log and the Dark Brotherhood assassins really start to get annoying. Now they attack in pairs with Adamantium Jinkswords doing an extra 10pts of poison damage and 10pts of paralyze. Maybe I should have something made with a resist paralysis constant effect enchantment. Or at least have some cure paralysis potions on me.

Another month later. Now just a couple of minutes below 90 hours. Finished the Fighter's Guild quest line (decided to beat Sjoring to death bare handed to assert dominance), no progress with the main quests, cleared some more side quests, basically became the fourth (fifth?) living god after picking up skill fortification spells in the Tribunal expansion (I only went there for this). I'll probably continue with the guilds for now.

I almost started a 2nd playthrough of System Shock Remastered. My first playthrough was prior to the last big patch, so I wanted to check it out. But at the last minute my brain decided on Doom 2016. It's probably a quick play and I can probably finish it in a few weeks if I try hard enough. I've had the game for years and have played it casually several times without intending to complete it. Now I'm going for it. Got about an hour and 20 minutes of playtime this morning. Might be able to get more in later today. I'd forgotten how I hate the checkpoint system on here. If you're not paying attention to the upper left corner, you'll miss when you meet the next checkpoint, and if you have to exit the game, you may have to end up playing a decent amount over again. My "workaround" if I think I'm going to play again in the next couple of hours is to exit to the menu and just minimize to desktop. Steam's counter thinks I'm still playing, but oh well. I track my own playtime via spreadsheet.

I'm pleased my system plays the game as well as it does. i5-12600kf, RTX 2080 (thanks, @liqmat !), 1080p at 144fps locked. GPU is about 40% utilized while CPU is 25-30%. Unlocked it's around 300 fps but the GPU is too loud at full speed.

Mass Effect
I completed the first major story mission previously, so today I just spent some time doing some of the side missions, including the one on the moon that (somehow) awards you with a choice of a class specialization. I've been trying to approach combat more tactically, but I'm still annoyed at how braindead your companion characters are. Even if I micromanage things, they still prefer to just run out in the open without ever taking cover (dying almost immediately)... so I've basically been doing everything on my own, while treating the other two characters as just special abilities (until they die).

One thing I really like about this one compared with its sequels is the sense of adventure. Why on earth did Bioware replace the quirky but fun Mako planet exploration with mining for minerals? The Mako adds so much to the game, and sort of brings Starflight to mind.

Underrail
Wow, this game is really exceptional. I didn't expect much from a single-character turn-based game, but I'm impressed. It's like sci-fi Eschalon: Book I, but with better quests and much more complex (in a good way) combat and character building. Or maybe like Fallout (1997), but with a massive interconnected world and much better combat. The game is quite linear at first, but quickly opens up, and there's just so much to do. There's even a crafting system; I normally hate crafting, but it's a lot of fun in this game.

newtmonkey wrote on 2025-03-09, 16:20:

Underrail
Wow, this game is really exceptional. I didn't expect much from a single-character turn-based game, but I'm impressed. It's like sci-fi Eschalon: Book I, but with better quests and much more complex (in a good way) combat and character building. Or maybe like Fallout (1997), but with a massive interconnected world and much better combat. The game is quite linear at first, but quickly opens up, and there's just so much to do. There's even a crafting system; I normally hate crafting, but it's a lot of fun in this game.

You had me at "sci-fi Eschalon: Book I". Wishlisted!

Started the first Eye of the Beholder (yes, all this time and I've never played it).

On balance I like it, and am enjoying it - party is currently a human Paladin, half-elf Fighter/Thief and human Cleric and Mage in the back row.

One thing that is annoying me are the secret walls/portals and lack of map. The second level in particular is a pain. I guess I'm used to the increased sophistication we've enjoyed over the 34 years since it was released.

megatron-uk wrote on 2025-03-09, 17:54:

Started the first Eye of the Beholder (yes, all this time and I've never played it).

On balance I like it, and am enjoying it - party is currently a human Paladin, half-elf Fighter/Thief and human Cleric and Mage in the back row.

One thing that is annoying me are the secret walls/portals and lack of map. The second level in particular is a pain. I guess I'm used to the increased sophistication we've enjoyed over the 34 years since it was released.

Make sure you back up your ONE save slot often. When I played through this, I saved myself into a dead end and my last backup was like two levels back. Ugh.

If your retro PC is next to your modern PC, keep a map up on the modern PC. Have fun!

clueless1 wrote on 2025-03-09, 16:35:

You had me at "sci-fi Eschalon: Book I". Wishlisted!

If you ever get around to playing it, let me know! I think you'd like it. It's a pretty brutal game that expects you to figure it out on your own, though there is a (brief and optional) tutorial and the interface is actually quite excellent, complete with a world map you can take notes on and that fills in as you explore, and a quest log. I had a lot of false starts, but I think as long as you decide on a particular type of character and specialize in that, it's pretty fair (at least on the default difficult level). My biggest problem getting into the game at first was trying to play as a jack of all trades sort of character.

There's a good mix of combat and exploration, though I think the focus is definitely on the latter. It's the kind of game where you can go off the beaten path and figure out a way through a tough area to get rewarded with some nice EXP, powerful gear, or even some new quest. The story is fine (it takes place in a pretty unique world), but the real treats are the hub areas where you spend most of your time interacting with characters and factions.

It really feels to me like a weird mashup of Eschalon (interface, combat), Deus Ex (overall vibe, areas designed with combat/hacking/stealth in mind), and Fallout: New Vegas (factions).

newtmonkey wrote on 2025-03-11, 18:51:

It really feels to me like a weird mashup of Eschalon (interface, combat), Deus Ex (overall vibe, areas designed with combat/hacking/stealth in mind), and Fallout: New Vegas (factions).

I'm interested in this one too - the thing turns me off about most of these sorts of games is the requirement to manage a party, but this is just a single character from what I understand. It's currently $22AUD on GOG so I'll wait for a sale.

badmojo wrote on 2025-03-11, 21:23:

I'm interested in this one too - the thing turns me off about most of these sorts of games is the requirement to manage a party, but this is just a single character from what I understand. It's currently $22AUD on GOG so I'll wait for a sale.

Yes, it is indeed just a single character to manage, so no party to worry about; there aren't even any companions as far as I can tell (around 15 hours in).

I fired up Bioshock on my WinXP rig the other day. I've never played it before and was instantly hooked. The visuals are great but the sound is even more superb! Tis a pity my XP machine doesn't have an EAX-compatible sound card and isn't hooked up to my 5.1 speaker system, which is reserved for my Win98 machine, because I'm missing out on the full EAX experience 😒

revolstar wrote on 2025-03-12, 10:34:

I fired up Bioshock on my WinXP rig the other day. I've never played it before and was instantly hooked.

I will be interested in hearing your opinion when you finish the game. 😀

I took the Worms (1995) CD out of storage to test some things with my new DOS machine, and then ended up playing it for a few hours before I knew what was happening. 😁

This game brings back fond memories of my childhood, as I used to play it together with my buddies. Everyone had their own team, and we would make jokes whenever someone made a spectacular miss, and offer praise when one of us pulled off a particularly good shot. Ahh, the good old days. It's not as fun playing against the computer, but the gameplay still holds up nicely to this day.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-03-12, 23:48:

It's not as fun playing against the computer, but the gameplay still holds up nicely to this day.

Yeah, when a buddy somehow managed to throw some miracle grenade across the map and hit you all you could do was marvel it, but when the computer does that (which it often does) I'm inclined to call shenanigans 😁

I got fairly good at it myself, throwing stuff from afar and hit, but that skill is long lost. Worms is one of those games I've got a lot of good memories but can't really play anymore, far too few weapons.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-03-12, 23:48:

I took the Worms (1995) CD out of storage to test some things with my new DOS machine, and then ended up playing it for a few hours before I knew what was happening. 😁

This game brings back fond memories of my childhood, as I used to play it together with my buddies. Everyone had their own team, and we would make jokes whenever someone made a spectacular miss, and offer praise when one of us pulled off a particularly good shot. Ahh, the good old days. It's not as fun playing against the computer, but the gameplay still holds up nicely to this day.

I have such fond memories of this game too. I was 15 when it was released. We used to play it in between Doom 2 death matches at LAN parties. Ahhh the good ol’days 😏

After taking a two year break from RTS games I finally got back on the saddle and completed the Allied campaign of C&C: Red Alert 2. I remember considering RA2 as the best C&C game back in the day, but apparently that has changed somewhere along the way.

I still enjoyed it, it's very entertaining, but while Tiberian Sun is very slow paced and atmospheric Red Alert 2 clearly leans over the opposite side with its faster more bombastic pace. I think I completed almost every mission in around 20mins or so, only the last mission took about 45mins. Meanwhile I think I fidgeted with Tiberian Sun for an hour or more per mission on avarage.

And me being the RTS sloth that I am I like Tiberian Sun precisely because it lets the player take their time and enjoy the ride. In Red Alert 2 on the other hand things can happen so quickly you barely get a chance to play around with the units you get. For example there's only one mission where the Aircraft Carriers (RA2 version of Cruisers) are of any use and I only had barely got them on the shores of the island the Soviets had their base on to do their thing before I got the mission accomplished screen. The enemy AI has a habit of selling every building after losing the critical ones and then attacking with every unit left which can lead to complete destruction of the base incredibly fast, especially since they tend to be small.

Same with Dolphins, I trained exactly one of them on the only mission they were available and I'm not sure did I do anything at all with it. I also never built the Allied superweapon on the last mission as there was no point, I was already about to win the mission anyway. The Allieds have an anti-AA ship Aegis Cruiser which I never built and an anti-AA stucture, the Patriot missile system, which I only ever built on the last mission as that's the only mission where the Soviets have access to an air unit. Both Aegis Cruiser and Patriots can shoot down missiles from Dreadnoughts (Soviet Cruiser paraller) and paratrooper planes but I never had the need to built them for either purpose.

It's perfectly fine that they wanted to make a game with faster pace, but I think they could have done better job at taking the faster pace into consideration while designing the missions. I also wonder was the single player campaign portion of the game a bit of a rush job at least in parts, some of the units seem to exist only for multiplayer purposes.

Though I might be the wrong guy to criticize the game, it's clearly aimed towards people who like faster pace and/or are more into multiplayer while I'm a slowpoke who probably has the mindset more suitable for watching paint dry.

But I still found it pretty fun nevertheless. Gameplay is enjoyable, Frank Klepacki's soundtrack is good, I like the humorous attitude the game has and the cutscenes are good, especially Barry Corbin as General Carville is great. It's entertaining, but the fast pace and short missions ultimately makes it somewhat forgettable experience for me.

Sombrero wrote on 2025-03-14, 11:26:

but while Tiberian Sun is very slow paced and atmospheric

a good way of putting it - i really liked the eerie setting, remnants of buildings and roads amid the (mostly) dry rocky landscape. it remained my favourite in the series

gerry wrote on 2025-03-14, 14:00:

a good way of putting it - i really liked the eerie setting, remnants of buildings and roads amid the (mostly) dry rocky landscape. it remained my favourite in the series

I wholeheartedly agree. And since you mentioned remnants of buildings I remembered on some maps you could find old and ruined GDI/NOD buildings from the first C&C, I loved that. Hits right in the feels.

Didn't notice such nods to the first Red Alert in RA2, but I'm not sure would such things have fitted in the tongue in cheek vibe the game went for anyway.